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 Gunnedah has claimed the title ‘Koala Capital of the World’. LPLM helped put it there and is helping to make sure the koalas are here to stay through two highly successful projects:
- Keeping Gunnedah koala friendly funded through Landcare Australia's partnership with Mobile Muster
- Restoring Koala Habitat Around Gunnedah: Building on a 1990 Success under the Restoration and Rehabilitation (community) program through the Environmental Trust
Background
In the early 1990s, a Landcare project saw thousands of trees planted to improve salinity problems. A fortunate byproduct of this reforestation was an increase in koala habitat and, thus, koalas. In fact, Gunnedah was the only location to record an increase in koala numbers in a statewide survey conducted in 2006.
The project’s aim is to capitalise on the success of the tree planting programs undertaken over the past 20 years to determine exactly how the koalas are moving across the landscape, which trees are being selected, and what issues have arisen that could help guide further plantings or koala management strategies.
Current Activities
 The Koala Research Project sees researchers catching koalas to fit them with radio tracking collars. These collars are then used to track the koalas feeding and sleeping patterns to measure how much time the koalas are spending in the new trees and thus how directly the habitat restoration has impacted on this expanding and healthy population of koalas.
The team is undertaking a week-long visit this October (2009) to catch and collar about 18 koalas on properties with both koalas and regrowth trees. The koalas will then be checked every 6-12 weeks with the collars being retrieved  in about six months. Each collar carries a radio-tracking antenna to assist in locating each koala. It also carries a GPS unit that records where the koala has been at four-hourly intervals through the night. This tells the researchers how far koalas are moving at night and what trees they select compared with their selected daytime resting places.
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